Arab on Duolingo

4 Comments

there is one Arabic course here which is supposed to be MSA (modern standard Arabic) but I've found lot of glitches so far and more words from dialects in it. Anyway, as for the keyboard, you can choose any really. They are all the same with minor differences in the order of some characters on the keyboard (and maybe adding some few more symbols than other ones and such).

Whoever told you that it is not useful apparently didn't have a life or something. Learning MSA is a priority over a dialect, because a dialect is simply MSA with some changes in vowels depending on the region (with extra words from foreign languages). MSA is the official language for the media, newspapers, even inside workplaces and everything official. Yes, a dialect is used in daily life between people, but it is not an official "thing" and we type it for each other in messages or whatever and there is even no standard in writing it. There are no books in dialects as far as I know (serious books that is and not just simple stuff not meant to be works of art or science). If you speak MSA with anyone in the Arab world, however his or her dialect is, they are supposed to understand you because this is taught in school and it does NOT differ by much from the dialect; They should understand. If not, then they must have been a failure or something.